Tim Tate

Author, Film-Maker & Investigative Journalist

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BETWEEN HUBRIS AND HYPE: EXARO NEWS SAYS IT IS TOO BUSY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS

Two weeks ago I asked Exaro News a series of six very serious questions about its stories relating to alleged historic sexual abuse at Elm Guest House and a VIP network based at Dolphin Square. Those questions – set out in my previous post (below) – quoted Exaro’s own statements, including its claims to have been responsible for initiating the multi-million pound Metropolitan Police investigation, Operation Midland.

On Wednesday evening the “Exaro team” e-mailed the following response. At its request, I am posting this in full.

Dear Tim Tate,

Please ensure that you publish our response in full.

Our reports on Exaro have already answered many of the questions that you pose.

Our long-standing policy is not to repeat answers on social media or to bloggers otherwise, as we are sure that you can appreciate, it would distract from the vitally important journalistic work that Exaro is doing in holding power to account.

So, first, you need to do some proper research. It is not for us to conduct your research for you.

In the meantime, you have referred at various points in blog posts to having been told a story by a “senior detective” on ‘Operation Fernbridge’ about how Customs had stopped Leon Brittan at Dover with “child pornography tapes”, while at the same time denying our report that Customs had seized a video alleged to show child sex abuse in the presence of a former Conservative cabinet minister.

Was the “senior detective” to whom you referred DCI Paul Settle?

All the best,

Editorial team,

Exaro

Apparently Exaro thinks it appropriate for a journalist to identify his sources (I don’t: and won’t). It is also apparently too busy (despite having several millions pounds of benefactor funding to draw on) to answer questions of very real public interest about its role in the troubled and troublesome Operation Midland.

Exaro’s e-mail also makes clear that it believes it is much too important to be held to account. Anyone looking for humility will find it in the dictionary. Sandwiched between “hubris” and “hype”.

SIX QUESTIONS FOR EXARO NEWS

The Metropolitan Police Service has announced a formal review of the way its officers handled allegations of historic child sexual abuse. Former judge Sir Richard Henriques will examine the conduct of Operations Midland, Fernbridge, Fairbank and Hedgerow (and possibly others).

Those operations have cost well in excess of £2 million.

The Met Police statement was short on the detail of what exactly Henriques will examine. It is therefore unclear whether his remit will extend to the role played by Exaro News. If it does not, then his investigation will be a waste of the Met’s resources. Here’s why.

According to its own published statements Exaro has variously been at the heart of, or – in the case of Operation Midland – the cause of, the Met Operations which Henriques will review. For more than three years the website has promoted a series of allegations so assiduously that Scotland Yard has been led to spend millions of pounds investigating them.

At most this has led to one successful prosecution: not one of the most sensational – and expensive to investigate – claims Exaro promoted has led to a single charge.

Given Exaro’s central role in the alleged VIP paedophile abuse saga, I have asked it six serious questions.

You have claimed credit for assisting the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into Elm Guest House.

“Under Operation Fairbank, the Met launched an investigation into Elm Guest House with Exaro’s help.”

What independent efforts you made to establish a factual basis for allegations made by complainants to you ?

You have claimed credit for the Metropolitan Police launching “Operation Midland”.

Under its wide-ranging ‘Operation Fairbank’, the Metropolitan Police Service’s paedophile unit is investigating activities at Dolphin Square, the complex near Parliament where many MPs have their London flats. The Met’s move was sparked by a report on Exaro in July of two separate witnesses’ accounts of child sex abuse at Dolphin Square more than three decades ago.

You have stated that an Exaro reporter provided to the Metropolitan Police Service a signed statement identifying a property in Pimlico as the key to “the dark secrets of a group of VIP paedophiles”.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service’s “Operation Midland” are investigating whether the Pimlico property – identified to them by Exaro – will help unlock the dark secrets of a group of VIP paedophiles. … Just over a week ago our reporter signed a formal statement for police in connection with the property.

Whether this “identification” came from a claim from one complainant or more than one complainant ?

Whether you recorded this “identification” on audio or video ?

In the event that more than one complainant “identified” the property, what steps you took to ensure there was no cross-contamination between these claims ?

You have reported that a senior Metropolitan Police Service detective is under investigation for “leaking” (in subsequent reports “suspected of leaking”) the identities of child a=sexual abuse complainants to BBC’s Panorama programme.

Police are investigating a senior detective who is a confidential source for BBC1’s Panorama over the leaking of secret identities in abuse cases …The Met this evening issued a statement in response to the Exaro story confirming that it was investigating a complaint received last month about “improper disclosure”

Scotland Yard has passed to Britain’s police watchdog its investigation into a detective suspected of leaking identities of complainants in abuse cases to BBC1’s Panorama. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will itself carry out the investigation into the senior detective …

In the past Exaro has chosen not to respond to questions about its reporting, preferring instead to attack those who dare to pose them as (variously) “Police/M15 agents” or “an embarrassment to journalism”.

Should Exaro choose to respond to these latest questions I will post their answers on this blog.

OF GENERALS AND CHILD ABUSE

This is the story of two war heroes – highly decorated soldiers both – and of how the Metropolitan Police responded to allegations about them concerning child sexual abuse.

Their contrasting stories should be examined by the Goddard Enquiry. But whether this happens may depend on public pressure for an open and transparent process. There is no doubt that Goddard and her teams of barristers should ask details questions about both men’s cases. Because the way each of these two very senior military leaders was treated encapsulates precisely the problems her investigation into the handling of historic child sexual abuse allegations was established to examine.

We can – because he has named himself (albeit after being outed by others) – identify the first of these war heroes. Field Marshall Edwin, Baron Bramall, Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff (the head of the armed services) until 1985.

The second was until relatively recently one of the United States most senior generals, who lived for a time in Britain. He must – for the time being – remain anonymous. I have his name, his (very senior) rank and his personal details. But for reasons which will become apparent, I am not naming him in this post.

Lord Bramall’s case first. Last week the Metropolitan Police announced that it was abandoning its 18-month investigation into allegations that Bramall had sexually abused a young boy. During this Bramall, whose extensive record of military service included the D-Day landings, had been interviewed under caution by the Met’s Operation Midland, had watched his house being searched by a large team of officers and seen his reputation dragged through the mud when his name was published by sections of the media.

The alleged crimes for which Bramall was so rigorously investigated stemmed from one (now adult) man. This complainant, known only as “Nick” made statements to the Met and gave interviews to Exaro News, the web-based news organisation which has placed itself at the centre of historic child sexual abuse allegations. In both his police statement and his Exaro interviews “Nick” claimed not just to have been sexually abused and tortured by a variety of VIP paedophiles during the 1970s and 1980s, but to have witnessed the sexually-motivated murder of other children.

There is no corroborative evidence for “Nick’s” allegations. No other witness or complainant has stated that he was present during this crimes; not a single piece of forensic or medical evidence has been found to back up the claims. In fact the only things Nick seemed to have in his favour are a very plausible demeanour – one person who has regularly met Nick says that if he is not telling the truth, he is a “Hollywood standard actor” – and the unwavering support of Exaro News.

The story of the US general is very different. There was what a highly experienced prosecutor described as “an open and shut case” to prosecute him. But the Metropolitan Police does not appear even to have begun an investigation.

The American officer is a decorated Vietnam war veteran who went on to play a major role in the planning and execution of America’s wars in the Gulf. He holds a very senior rank – and, by extension, very high security clearance – in the US Army. In the late 1970s this officer spent some time in Britain. He was seconded to the British Army Staff College at Camberley in Surrey. It appears that he used this address to receive a postal mailing of child pornography from an American supplier.

The reason we know about this is that his name and address appears on a list of British-based customers of US child pornographers. That list was compiled by the US Customs Child Pornography and Protection Division, and handed to me in 1987.

I was then researching a Roger Cook television documentary about child pornography. For more than a year I worked closely with US Customs and its sister unit at the US Postal Service. These two agencies were, at the time, setting the benchmark for investigating and prosecuting those who dealt in child pornography – both inside America and internationally. Each agency was adamant that their evidence was enough for British police to arrest and charge the men on the list. Both agencies had also previously supplied these names to the Home Office, and were surprised that no action had been taken.

I was also then working very closely with the Obscene Publications Branch at New Scotland Yard. That unit – then known as TO13 – was much less effective than its American counterparts, largely due to the refusal of the Met’s senior management to recognise the seriousness of the problem. Of its 11 officers, just two were assigned to investigating child pornography. The senior officer in charge of TO13, Supt. Iain Donaldson was deeply frustrated by the refusal of his superiors to engage with the issue. He had repeatedly lobbied the Met’s management for more officers to tackle child pornography.

By agreement, Roger Cook handed the lists to Donaldson on film. Donaldson believed that if he was made to look a little foolish in a television documentary, his bosses would finally agree to assign additional officers to child pornography investigations. A clip of that encounter can be seen below.

There was a very clear understanding that New Scotland Yard would make enquiries into each of the names on the US lists. Supt. Donaldson and his officers certainly wanted to do so. Joyce Karlin, a US Federal prosecutor who specialised in child pornography cases, believed that the American evidence should be enough to launch an investigation. Her interview clip is here:

But did those investigations ever take place ? Or were Donaldson’s urgent pleas for a more serious approach to child pornography ignored by the Met’s senior management ? The subsequent stellar career of the American general who had child pornography sent to him at the British Army Staff College would seem to imply that no investigations were ever instituted into his actions , nor that the US Army was ever appraised of what he was alleged to have done whilst in Britain. The General’s military trajectory carried on ever-upwards.

(There is other evidence to suggest that the US lists were simply consigned to a filing cabinet inside New Scotland Yard. One of the other names given by US Customs was Charles Napier, the former treasurer of the Paedophile Information Exchange. Despite the fact that his address was clearly and correctly identified on the US Customs list – the address, therefore, at which he had received child pornography – no police action would be taken against Napier until 1995. During that period he was left free to abuse children. Napier is now serving a lengthy prison sentence for doing just that).

Two generals, then; war heroes both, with two starkly contrasting experiences of the Metropolitan Police’s responses to allegations concerning child sexual abuse. One whose life has been blighted by unsupported accusations from a single, uncorroborated complainant; a second who was never even investigated despite cast-iron evidence that he bought and received child pornography.

It is difficult to escape the inference that in seeking to atone for the historic failures exemplified by the American general’s story, the Metropolitan Police was over-zealous in dealing with Lord Brammall. That is – or should be – one of the strands of the Goddard Enquiry. It certainly has the evidence.

The US Customs and Postals lists are currently locked in a safe at the Goddard Enquiry’s offices. They were handed to the Enquiry’s counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, last year. Goddard must examine how and why the names on those lists were never investigated, nor any prosecutions brought. She must summon those who were responsible for Metropolitan Police policy – its commanders and the Home Office officials to whom they answered – and ask them to explain their refusal to provide Supt. Donaldson with the resources to do his job.

WHEN IS A MINORITY NOT A MINORITY ?

This week, Sir Lenny Henry appeared at a television industry conference discussing diversity. Speaking during a debate entitled “How Far Have We Come”, held at Channel 4, Sir Lenny said:

“It’s wonderful to see everybody here. It’s great actually to see everybody moving in the same direction on this issue, because it needs to be moved on, doesn’t it?”

Channel 4 has positioned itself in the vanguard of a campaign to increase representation of BAME people – that’s “Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic”, in case you didn’t know – both on screen and in television production. In time for the conference C4 congratulated itself for hitting 24 of the 30 targets it set itself last year in its 360° Diversity Charter.

That charter covers more ground than BAME: it aims to include disability within its scope, for example. But it specifically committed the Channel to putting diversity front and centre in its commissioning priorities and improving its BAME quotient was a key stipulation. Producers wanting to do business with Channel 4 were required to a pass ‘two-tick’ process: the first tick showed that their programme ideas included a diversity element, the second that the production team also passed the diversity test. In Channel 4’s own words:

“The aim of diversity policy in broadcasting is simple: to include and nurture talent, and to reflect contemporary Britain on and offscreen.”

It is, unquestionably, good news that both programmes and production teams are becoming more representative of Britain’s diverse population. And where C4 led, other broadcasters have scurried to follow. Both the BBC and ITV are working to improve their representation of minorities, both on and off screen.

But are all minorities equal in broadcaster’s eyes ? Are some less deserving of recognition than others ? Recent experience suggests that the answer might be an uncomfortable ‘yes’.

I run a small and successful independent production company. We make documentary films for all the main British broadcasters as well as international networks. Several of the films have won major awards. Last autumn my colleague and co-producer developed a history documentary idea which investigated the experiences of the oldest minority ethnic community in Britain. What happened to that proposal raises questions about the integrity of broadcasters’ commitments to diversity.

Chinese communities have been established throughout Britain for more than 150 years. Today, the British-Chinese population exceeds 247,000: that represents 0.5% of the overall population, and approximately 5% of the total non-white demographic.

This is, of course, far smaller than the other two main “minority ethnic” groupings. The number of “south Asian” people – those whose ethnicity stems from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sir Lanka – is more than 3 million, accounting for more than 8% of the overall UK population. While, according to the 2011 UK Census, there are1,904,684 UK residents who self-identify as “Black/African/Caribbean/Black British” – a total of 3 per cent of the country’s population.

But the British Chinese community has two unique and notable traits. It tends to produce high-achievers – economically and academically; and it tends not to trouble the police or authorities with complaints about experiencing racism. And yet, as we discovered, that racism is a very real problem. A new police unit set up in the north of England has discovered evidence that British Chinese were frequently the victims of racially-motivated crime. However, they rarely reported it.

We wondered why.

One answer may well lie in the history of the British Chinese experience. For more than 100 years that community has been the subject of vicious racial prejudice, wild public scare stories, and wicked press-driven hatred. But what was truly shocking was the discovery that in 1947 – having risked their lives on the Atlantic Convoys of World War Two (the vital lifeline which kept this country fed and powered in the darkest days of the war) at least a thousand Chinese British seamen were brutally rounded up, flung on to coffin ships and dumped in China.

That China was then in the midst of a vicious civil war and that these men who had served Britain so well were – at the very least – being put in harm’s way had not mattered. Nor had the fact that many had wives and children in Britain – families from whom they had been quite literally snatched. The government wanted rid of this minority group – and had forcible repatriated them.

This story had remained secret for decades. That it was beginning to emerge was due to the efforts of a remarkable member of the British Chinese community who had unearthed official papers in the National Archive showing what had happened to his father, one of the deported seamen.

It seemed to us that this story was both important (the resonance between the rabid anti Chinese press campaigns and today’s Islamophobia was uncomfortably close). It was genuinely revelatory, and it also helped explain both the experience and contemporary position of one of the least understood of all the UK’s “minority ethnic” populations. It plainly delivered the first ‘tick’

It also completed the second. Not only were both presenters we put forward British Chinese, but so is my colleague and co-producer who developed the story.

The broadcasters’ response was curious. Channel 4 pronounced that it was “too straight down the line” for its history output, which more routinely concentrates on digging up downed Spitfires or positing ludicrous theories about Ancient Egyptian tombs. The BBC (which has just announced a substantial new series on the well-trodden ground of Black History of Britain) said that it didn’t “fit the outline of the kind of project we are expected to deliver”, and that audiences “rarely come to stories like this”.

What both decisions actually come down to is that these two broadcasters think audience figures are more important than reflecting “contemporary Britain on and of screen” (to use Channel 4’s wording); and that ratings trump the commitment to genuine diversity.

It could, of course, also be that the oldest “minority ethnic” community in the UK is deemed not sufficiently ethnic to be pulled up on the BAME bandwagon. In other words, (to borrow from Orwell) that some minorities are more equal than others – though that would surely be politically rather difficult to state publicly.

But in either case, turning a blind eye to the experience and history of the British Chinese community seems to sit badly with the self-congratulatory sprit of the broadcasters’ promises of diversity. Perhaps Sir Lenny might care to take a closer look at the backdrops and scenery through which we are all, in his words, “moving in the same direction”. They might, just might, be no more than a Potemkin set, designed to impress more than deliver.

Robert Black: the mistakes, the man and the “monster”.

The serial child killer Robert Black, who died in Maghaberry prison, Northern Ireland this week, was one of only 62 prisoners – 60 men and two women – serving a “whole life tariff”: an order made in cases of where an offender is deemed to be irredeemably dangerous to society.

Robert Black was unquestionably that: he was convicted of the kidnapping and sexually-motivated murder of four children, the kidnapping of a fifth child and the attempted kidnapping of a sixth. All his victims were girls, between the ages of 5 and 11.

Black was also devious and calculating. He was the prime suspect in a series of other unsolved child abductions and murders. In each case there was very strong circumstantial evidence that he was responsible. Yet for more than two decades, long after he knew he would never be released from prison, he refused to discuss these cases with detectives. As a result they remain officially unsolved and the children’s families have never seen justice done. Nor, as we shall see, was he averse to using public money to suppress – or at least to attempt to suppress – information about his lifelong obsession with the abuse and death of children.

But the story of Black’s lifetime of offending – it spanned 35 years – also highlights fundamental problems in the way we have historically policed (or not) sexual crimes against children; and how effectively (or not) we deal with those who commit them.

From 1986 onwards I worked closely with a remarkable man called Ray Wyre. For twenty years, until his death in 2008, we wrote books and made documentaries together. Ray was a former probation officer who had, almost by accident, discovered a very effective ability to unpick the tangled strands of motivation which lead men (and some women) to sexually abuse children. He did so in the unshakeable belief that if these offenders (and the rest of society) could be helped to understand what drove their behaviour – and its impact on the victims – at least some of them could be prevented from continuing it.

It was, particularly in the climate of the times, a very brave decision. His residential programmes for offenders certainly worked – I witnessed this, first hand – but they were deeply unpopular in the neighbourhoods in which they were situated. One was fire-bombed out of existence.

In 1990 Ray was the most prominent expert on sex offending in the country. That year Robert Black was arrested near the village of Stow, Scotland. He had been seen bundling a child into the back of his van. When police stopped him they found a six year old girl gagged and tied up in a sleeping bag. The girl was the daughter of the officer who searched the van: he had not known she was missing until that point.

Black was charged, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Shortly afterwards his solicitors asked Ray to assess him with a view to mounting an appeal against the sentence. Ray’s subsequent report was uncompromising: it said that Black was unquestionably dangerous and that the sentence was appropriate.

As a result Black’s appeal was abandoned. But despite this, Black asked Ray to visit him again in prison to help him try and understand his desire to abduct and abuse children. There would be no payment for doing so, but Ray agreed, with one proviso: that their sessions would be tape recorded and that Ray would be free to use the material to further public understanding of such extreme offending. Black signed a formal agreement to that effect.

Ray quickly realized that the interviews were very important – not least because Black was then under investigation for the abduction and murder of what were then known as ‘The Big Three’ unsolved child killings: Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper. He brought the audio recordings to me and we agreed that we should jointly make a documentary and write a book.

The contents of those tapes were harrowing, to say the least. Black’s childhood and early life was bleak and provided very clear clues about the reasons for his subsequent sex offending. However, they also clearly highlighted a succession of blunders by police and the courts. In what was – even in the early 1990s – becoming a familiar pattern, the failure to grasp just how dangerous this man was stretched back to the 1960s and allowed him to continue offending through to 1990.

Black was plainly tortured by the knowledge of what he was doing. He genuinely wanted to understand what drove his obsession with inflicting appalling abuse on young girls and then causing their deaths. And he was also willing – at least in part – to give hints about other crimes he had committed. Ray patiently explored all this with him as the tape recorder rolled.

The result was that together with the police task force set up to investigate whether Black was responsible for a string of unsolved child killings, we were subsequently able to show – often using his own words – that he was the most likely suspect. One of these cases – that of Jennifer Cardy in 1981 – would eventually be formally laid at Black’s door. In 2011 he was sentenced to 25 years for her murder. But there were at least eight other cases for which he was never prosecuted. Perhaps the most famous was the abduction and (presumed) murder of Genette Tate

in August 1978. Genette was 13 – though she looked several years younger – when she was snatched in broad daylight from a country lane near her home in the Devon village of Aylesbeare. She had been doing a paper round on her bicycle. The photograph of her bike, seemingly abandoned in the middle of the road, became an iconic and haunting image of our inability to protect children.

In his interviews with Ray, Black came close to admitting that he had abducted Genette. But although he dropped hints and talked in such a way that Ray became convinced of his guilt, Black never quite confessed.

When Black was charged with the murder of Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper, he ended the sessions with Ray. His new lawyers were, understandably, nervous about tape recorded interviews with their client.

Ray and I took the material to Channel 4 and to Penguin Books. The former commissioned a documentary, the latter a book. Neither was to be published until after the conclusion of Black’s trial for the Big Three. Indeed, as we all well knew, the law of contempt made it illegal to publish while the case was on-going.

Despite this, Black obtained public money from the legal aid fund to take out an ex-parte injunction against Channel 4 and both Ray and I. This sought to suppress the tape recordings of the prison interviews. It was an entirely spurious action: not merely was there a very real public interest in the contents of these recordings, but Black had signed a release form authorizing their publication. It took several months, several appearances at the High Court and a substantial bill for legal costs before the injunction was quashed. The film, titled The Murder of Childhood, was transmitted on the night that he was convicted of the Maxwell, Hogg and Harper murders. It can be viewed on the films page of this website. The book, which carried the same title, was published some months later. An extract can be viewed on the books page of this website.

Both the documentary and the book highlighted the blunders which had allowed Black to abuse, abduct and kill for so long. Most crucially, these involved a repeated failure by several police forces to share intelligence or even the record of Black’s growing criminal record.

But what was even more shocking was the discovery that several years after his first life sentence (for the abduction in Stow) – and decades after his first recorded sexual crime – the name of Robert Black was still not logged on the most important national database of paedophile offenders.

That record was maintained (at least in theory) by the National Criminal Intelligence Service. As the documentary showed, the paedophile index at NCIS was grossly underfunded. It had, at the time, just three officers permanently staffing it; by contrast in the adjacent office there were at least 11 officers dedicated to running the football hooligan database. The documentary clearly shows the embarrassment of the NCIS spokesperson about the failure to log Black on its paedophile index.

In 2006 NCIS was merged with the newly-created Serious Organised Crime Agency. SOCA was not noticeably more successful than its predecessor – at least in the running a national intelligence system covering known paedophiles. In 2013 it was folded into yet another new organization, the National Crime Agency.

Is NCA any better than NCIS or SOCA ? It’s impossible to know. Newspapers regularly describe this lead organization in the fight against all forms of organized crime – and that includes paedophiles – as “Britain’s FBI”. Yet unlike that American law enforcement institution, NCA is immune from public scrutiny: it is specifically excluded from requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Yesterday broadcasters covered the death of Robert Black extensively. I was interviewed and asked whether the institutional failures which enabled him to carry on killing for so long had now been rectified. It was be pleasing to think so. But the honest answer is that, as a result of this secrecy, we cannot know.

What I do know is that yesterday much of the press and media coverage of his death used dumb and unhelpful clichés. Black was a “monster’, he was “evil”.

Revisiting the tapes of Ray Wyre’s interviews with the man reminded me of the great lesson Ray wanted to teach. He never minimized or excused the appalling nature of the crimes committed by the men he worked with: but he knew that categorizing them as “monsters” was simply counter-productive.

Robert Black’s crimes were monstrous – no question about it. But he committed them for a reason. The lesson which has never been learned is that unless we spend the time and money to uncover and understand those reasons we will never protect children from men like Black. And calling them “monsters” is a sure way to prevent such vital understanding.

TRUE CRIME MUSEUM TALK – NOV 13 2015

The book was prompted by extraordinarily diligent and painstaking research by a former police intelligence officer, Chris Clark. Chris’ work showed quite clearly that Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was the most likely perpetrator of 23 additional murders, as well as several more attempts. The victims were men as well as women; and far from being an exclusively northern predator, the evidence suggests that Sutcliffe struck all over the country – from London to the Midlands as well as Yorkshire and Manchester.

These crimes have never – officially – been solved. That has caused immense distress to some of the victims families (as well as the surviving victims). But worse even that this, three entirely innocent men each spent half a lifetime in prison for murders which Sutcliffe almost certainly carried out. They were eventually freed – but the cases remain open.

My talk at the Crime Museum will detail these unsolved murders and attempted murders. But it will also examine how Sutcliffe was – wrongly – excluded as a suspect, and how a blanket of official secrecy has been thrown over these cold cases.

PIE MEMBERSHIP LIST: HOW THE HOME OFFICE AND POLICE FAILED CHILDREN

Few documents have excited as much speculation as the membership list of the Paedophile Information Exchange. Claims about the number of members and their occupations have been made for more than 30 years, but the actual list itself has never been published.

Almost two years ago I learned the whereabouts of a copy of the list. I spent several months tracking down and then interviewing the person who held it. I was able to ascertain how this person came to own it and where it had been kept: a full chain of custody, in other words.

I also confirmed that last summer the list was handed to the Metropolitan Police and – subsequently – to the Goddard Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. This ensured that if or when I obtained the document, there could be no suggestion that I had contaminated, amended or in any way interfered with its contents.

Last week, the document itself arrived at my office.

I have spent the past nine days analyzing the list. That process – of which more shortly – indicates that the police and the Home Office failed to assign sufficient importance to membership of PIE, and that children were subsequently sexually abused as a result.

First: the basic details.

The list is dated 1983 – 1984 (though there are handwritten annotations made, evidently by police officers, in 1985). These dates are important: they coincide with the period in which Leon Brittan, the Home Secretary, was under pressure to ban PIE. It is a matter of record that he did not do so.

There are 307 individuals listed as members. Four of the members were women.

Most – though not all – of the 307 have a membership number beside their name.

(It should be noted that this is only one version of what was, originally, a much lengthier record of approximately 1,000 members of PIE. The original full register was, in those pre-computer days, cut up and parceled to several police forces. This remaining list – the only one, to my knowledge, still in existence – is the result of that process.)

The document shows that some effort was made to establish the accuracy of the PIE membership records. 254 of the names were listed as UK residents: of these, addresses were shown and/or confirmed for 213 of them.

Of the remaining 41, just one was found to be an assumed name; 11 addresses were “unknown” and 4 others were shown as no longer in existence. 16 individuals were found to be unknown at the address given for them, with a final 9 showing no street address at all.

Of the 53 foreign members, there was one each in Sweden, Norway, Luxemburg, Canada and Iran; 2 each in the Republic of Ireland and West Germany (as it was then); 5 in Australia, 13 in France and 24 in the United States.

There are no recognizable politicians’ names on the list. And whilst Sir Peter Hayman, the foreign office official-cum spy outed as a PIE member in 1981 is included (his name, without any address, handwritten in pen), there is no mention of convicted spy and rumoured PIE member Geoffrey Prime.

There are two clergymen listed: one was a senior army chaplain. This man appears later to have resigned his commission and also have had a history of involvement with the Christian youth organization, the Boys’ Brigade. There is one other member shown as having a military rank – Major – but his address was a mail holding “BM Box Number” .

There are three University academics, two in the UK: one, Ken Plummer of Essex University, said last year that he had only joined PIE to facilitate his research. The address of the other was shown as an Engineering faculty, which presumably ruled out academic reasons for joining the organization.

Of the UK residents listed, 3 (all men) were recorded as having criminal records: CRO numbers have been written, in pen, beside their names – but with no details of what offences were committed. Additionally, one other member was listed as being in prison – again with no offence details shown.

These men with criminal records were rank and file members. The criminal convictions of PIE’s Executive Committee are not shown.

I do not have access to the Criminal Records Office database (maintained since 2006 by the Association of Chief Police Officers) or the former Criminal Records Bureau (now part of the Home Office Disclosure and Barring Service) . Nor do I have access to the Police National Computer which also maintains a database of criminal records. It is therefore impossible to know how many of the 254 UK-resident PIE members on the 1983-84 list might subsequently have been convicted of child sex offences.

But publicly available records, together with a separate list of British men who obtained child pornography from US dealers, show that several PIE members were subsequently convicted of offences against children- and that both the police and the Home Office failed to grasp the likelihood of this when dealing with either of the lists.

The US list first. In 1987 I was the researcher for a Cook Report documentary investigating child pornography. During the research I worked closely with two American law enforcement departments: US Customs and US Postals. Both maintained dedicated teams which were then the most effective international effort against the trade in child pornography. Both agencies supplied me with lists of British customers of proven American child pornography dealers.

Those lists contained 58 names and addresses: 53 were provided by US Customs, 5 by US Postals. Seven of those names appear on the PIE membership list: among them were three of PIE’s executive committee: Peter Bremner, Charles Napier and Leo Adamson.

Both US Customs and US Postals insisted that their lists had already been provided to the British government. Both were surprised that no action appeared to have been taken to investigate or charge the British men. The specialist agents in charge of both organisations said that their evidence should have been enough to secure convictions: this view was backed up (in a filmed interview) by the Assistant US Attorney who successfully prosecuted some of the American dealers in federal court.

I took the lists to the Metropolitan Police’s Obscene Publications Squad, with whom I was also working closely for the film. TO13 (as it was known) was then the only full-time police unit investigating child pornography. Its senior officer, Superintendent Iain Donaldson, was adamant that he had never been given the lists: he was angry about this and believed that what was plainly vital intelligence had been withheld from him, either by his superiors in the Met or by the Home Office which, under existing procedures, would have received them from the American government.

Donaldson was then fighting a bitter battle with the Met’s bureaucracy to increase the number of officers investigating child pornography and organized paedophilia. Of TO13’s 12 officers, just two were then tasked with tackling material involving children. We agreed that Roger Cook would interview Donaldson and hand the US lists to him on film: the Superintendent hoped that the embarrassment (to the Met) of appearing ignorant on national television would boost his chances of having more officers assigned to child pornography investigations. A clip of that (subsequently broadcast) encounter can be viewed below.

Donaldson and his successors did eventually get more officers. But nothing appears to have been done with the names on the US lists – even though TO13 also held the PIE membership list on which seven of them were identified.

It would be another seven years before the first of those names – Peter Bremner (who had previous convictions in the 1970s) – was charged with contact offences against children: his victims were between five and eight years old. Bremner was jailed for six months.

Charles Napier was not prosecuted until the following year (1995). He was given a nine-month sentence on two counts of sexually assaulting an underage boy.

Leo Adamson was not brought to justice until May 2011 – 24 years after the Met was given the US lists showing him to be a purchaser of child pornography (and 27 years after his name appeared on the PIE list). At his trial, the court heard evidence that he and two other men had amassed 14,500 photographs, films and drawings depicting the rape and sexual abuse of young boys.

All three men were on the PIE membership list. All three men were also on the US Customs list. Had the Home Office or the Metropolitan Police acted on either, the men’s victims could have been spared.

Nor are these three former PIE officials isolated instances: the list I obtained last week shows that Membership Number 419 belonged to one T.J. Waters. It also showed that in 1983-84 his address was that of a private school in Surrey.

“T.J. Waters” is Terence James Waters: in the 1970s and early 1980s he was an art and carpentry teacher. He was also – according to the US Customs list – a proven customer of US child pornography dealers. Like Bremner and Napier he would not be prosecuted until the mid 1990s: in 1994 he was sentenced to 10 years for possessing indecent images of children – and for sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy.

But it would be a further 17 years before the facts about his systematic abuse of young boys at the Surrey school emerged. In 2011 he was charged with (and admitted) seven counts of indecent assault and five of indecency with a child. The court heard evidence that Waters had built a “secret room” in the school loft above his art room: during the 1970s and 1980s he took boys there to abuse them.

These men – Bremner, Napier, Adamson and Waters – are only those for which I have (thus far) been able to locate public records of criminal convictions. (The relatively small percentage of the overall PIE roster should not be taken as a reliable indication of the likely offending rate amongst its members, simply as an indication that without access to the criminal records database it is very difficult to locate convictions.)

There are others on the PIE list (as well as the US Customs/Postals lists) who should be – and should have been – investigated. PIE member No. 132, for example, was a teacher at an independent prep school for boys. He quit teaching unexpectedly early, but continued – according to his obituary – to help young pupils by taking them to sports fixtures in his car and buying them equipment.

The Goddard Enquiry needs to ask searching questions about what (if any) real effort was made by the Metropolitan Police to investigate the men who were identified on the PIE list. It must also seek an explanation for the failure to act on the US Customs and Postals lists. But above all it needs to demand answers from the Home Office. Why did Home Secretary Leon Brittan decide that PIE was not to be banned ? What instructions did he (or any of his successors) give to the Metropolitan Police that PIE members were to be thoroughly investigated and monitored ? At that time, the Met was the only police force to fall under the Home Secretary’s jurisdiction.

Goddard has the PIE list. It also, to my certain knowledge, has the US Customs and Postals lists from my Cook Report film. It needs to act on them.

AMAZON & DAVID AARONOVITCH – PT. 2

David Aaronovitch has taken issue with my previous blog piece (“Dear Amazon: We Need To Talk About David”). In a series of messages on Twitter today he argued that I had misrepresented the truth about his critical reviews of his 2009 book, Voodoo History, on Amazon.

In the interest of fairness, and as a right of reply, this update sets out Mr. Aaronovitch’s Tweet-based complaints.

Yesterday’s blog was in response to a story that Amazon was seeking to take action against those who post bogus reviews of products on its site. I drew attention to the fact that on April 21, 2014, Mr. Aaronovitch had used his column in The Times to admit that upon publication of his book he had asked “every friend and family member to go onsite PDQ and 5-star [his] baby”, [ “onsite” referring to Amazon]; and that, in his words, such positive reviews were “frauds”.

Mr. Aaronovitch’s column explained that the reason he had suborned such “frauds” was that:

Something like half of all book sales are now made through Amazon, and when you find a book on Amazon it is accompanied by reviews from “readers” who give it a 1 (lowest) to 5 star rating.

So, almost before my book was published, the first 1-star reviews started to appear, from people who had never read it. After a week, even I wouldn’t have bought it.

His solution, he said, was to get equally bogus counterbalancing 5-star reviews submitted by his friends and family.

Leaving aside, for a moment, the dishonesty involved in this process, my blog piece drew attention to the fact that none of the one-star reviews for his book currently viewable on Amazon were posted until one month after publication. By contrast, the first five-star review currently viewable on the site was posted on the day of publication.

Mr. Aaronovitch first tweeted to say:

You’re Wrong. The simple answer is that Amazon subsequently took down a number of those too-early reviews. You can apologise.

I responded as follows:

If you can provide poof of this I will happily make it clear. Can you justify your willingness to commit fraud ?

To which Mr. Aaronovitch replied:

I don’t feel an obligation either morally or legally to ‘prove’ anything to u. U didn’t check before you made the allegation.

Under the circumstances I would say it was incumbent upon you to check. Both morally and legally. But you didn’t, did you?

Well, no, I didn’t. Because Mr. Aaronovitch’s column gave no indication that he had requested any such removal by Amazon.

There is no way for me, independently, to verify Mr. Aaronovitch’s claims that the near-instantaneous bogus negative reviews to which he referred were removed by Amazon. I therefore simply report his statement as a matter of fairness.

I did, however, ask him whether he had also sought the removal of the similarly bogus instant 5-star reviews of his book – reviews which, lest we forget, he described as “frauds”. Looking at the Twitter feed, I don’t believe he answered that question. He did however state:

None of those reviews were fraudulent but I did request them. Yr account is clearly libellous [sic] but more important, it’s wrong.

On the wider moral question of whether he felt it was right to suborn fraudulent reviews in the first place [“You get your frauds to balance off their frauds”], Mr. Aaronovitch was also silent – despite questions I asked him about this. Instead he accused me of “malice” because he had “shown clearly” that I was “the willing victim of a hoax”.

This relates to two programmes he made for BBC Radio earlier this year on the subject of satanic ritual abuse. I was one of the interviewees. I and five others (both interviewees and those referred to in the programmes) subsequently made complaints to the BBC. Those complaints were rejected at first instance by the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit: at our joint request, as is perfectly normal, they are now being considered by the BBC Trust.

I have explained to Mr. Aaronovitch that despite his attempts at baiting me on this subject, I and the other complainants feel we should not discuss the matter publicly while the BBC Trust is investigating.

I have also explained that I hold absolutely no malice towards Mr. Aaronovitch. This post, which sets out his arguments, in his own words, bears that out.

DEAR AMAZON, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DAVID …

The Sunday Times reports today that Amazon, the world’s largest on-line marketplace, is taking action against those who post bogus positive reviews of products on its site. It is to sue these fakes “for the manipulation and deception” of Amazon customers.

Amazon might like to begin this admirable process by pursuing someone who has recently and publicly admitted getting his friends and family to post fraudulent reviews of his work – and doing so in the hope of better sales.

On April 21st 2014, the high profile journalist and commentator David Aaronovitch told the readers of his regular column in The Times:

Sometimes though, even good people (ie: me) have to do questionable things, because the system makes us. Take my last book debunking conspiracy theories …

Something like half of all book sales are now made through Amazon, and when you find a book on Amazon it is accompanied by reviews from “readers” who give it a 1 (lowest) to 5 star rating.

So, almost before my book was published, the first 1-star reviews started to appear, from people who had never read it. After a week, even I wouldn’t have bought it.

There is only one thing you can do in this situation. You ask every friend and family member to go onsite PDQ and 5-star your baby. You get your frauds to balance off their frauds. Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais (grâce à Amazon) c’est la guerre.

This casual admission of “fraud” was – to me, at least – shocking. I have published 13 non-fiction books: I have never once felt tempted to encourage or commission fraudulent reviews intended to persuade potential readers to buy my work.

I am prepared to accept Mr. Aaronovitch’s assertion that other people practice a similar dishonesty. In 2010 the academic historian Orlando Figes admitted using a false name to post favourable reviews of his own work on Amazon (as well as uploading critical reviews of books by his rivals) But following a very public controversy Figes apologised for his actions, describing them as “foolish errors”. Mr Aaronovitch, by contrast, seems cheerfully unrepentant.

But aside from exposing his remarkable lack of integrity (or honesty), when examined in detail Mr. Aaronovitch’s admission of fraud also reveals much about his own lax journalistic standards. The “justification” he claimed for perpetrating his fraud was that “almost before my book was published, the first 1-star reviews started to appear, from people who had never read it”. A careful analysis of Amazon suggests this is untrue.

His book, Voodoo Histories, was published on May 7, 2009. The first 1 star review is dated June 8 – a full month after publication. It was followed by a handful of other 1 star reviews from July onwards.

By contrast, two 5 star reviews are dated May 7 – the very day of publication. A further six 5 star reviews appeared before the first critical 1 star review was posted.

If Mr. Aaronovitch can’t even be accurate when confessing to dishonesty it makes me (as a fellow journalist) wonder how much reliance should be placed on the rest of his writing.

And beyond this, that The Times continues to employ a man who, by his own account in its own pages, has attempted to manipulate and deceive – for personal financial gain – consumers on the world’s largest retail platform, suggests that honesty, accuracy and integrity are no longer deemed important requirements for ‘star’ journalists.

A HARLOT EXPOSED: EXARO & THE VIP ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

For a self-styled serious journalist, Mark Watts can be remarkably slippery when put on the spot.

He rarely answers questions from other journalists (myself included) about either the stories his website, Exaro, publishes or the rigor with which it might – or might not – have sought any form of corroborative evidence before rushing into print.

I believe strongly that journalists have a duty to be open and transparent. This means being able and willing to back up incendiary claims which will inevitably lead to public money being spent on investigation into their accuracy. Mr Watts evidently disagrees. Last week he was pinned down by Newsnight in the wake of Panorama’s programme about the VIP child sexual abuse (and murder) allegations which Exaro – to use its own word – “exposed”.

Lest we forget, Exaro also claims credit for the enormously expensive police enquiry – Operation Midland – which ensued. Yet Mr. Watts declined to answer a succession of perfectly straightforward and reasonable questions about what due diligence he and his staff had undertaken before promoting the sensational claims of its stable of survivors – “Nick”, “Darren”, “Andrew” and Esther.

But Mr. Watts’ elastic relationship to evidence and openness appears to extend beyond evading the questions from other journalists. Today, the man who has funded Exaro’s activities (to the tune, so far of more than £2 million) published a statement explaining his support for the business. Dr. Jerome Booth, a wealthy financier, explained that he had discussed this week’s criticism of Exaro’s behaviour with Mr Watts. He was, apparently reassured, stating that Mr. Watts and his team were only doing what any other journalist would do: reporting the fact that police are making enquiries.

From my reading of the website, Exaro has always been very clear it is reporting on allegations that are under active investigation by the Metropolitan police.

Sadly, this is untrue. Exaro has, in fact, pronounced that the allegations from its complainants are “undoubtedly an enormous scandal”. In other words, in Exaro’s view they are accurate.

This ringing endorsement of the allegations made by its stable of complainants was contained in an e-mail to me in July last year. I had written, politely, asking Exaro either to provide evidence for a story which I knew to be false, or to withdraw it. Here’s the highlights of the response.

Your e-mail did make us laugh here at Exaro, in light of recent events. We stand by everything that we have published … You are an embarrassment to journalism.

Having had enormous success in forcing the issue of organised, child sex abuse in relation to a range of institutions in the UK onto the national agenda, culminating in a critically important overarching inquiry, we prefer to continue to focus our efforts in exposing – often in conjunction with other media outlets – what is undoubtedly an enormous scandal.

Hubris and self-importance aside, the antics of Exaro over the VIP abuse allegations are the polar opposite of good journalism. They, instead, are that toxic mixture of power without responsibility. And that, as a former Prime Minister (Stanley Baldwin) once noted, has been “the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”.